Sovereign DAW — Defensive Concept Note

This concept note establishes prior art for Sovereign DAW, a proposed provenance-aware digital audio workstation for the AI era. Unlike conventional DAWs that focus solely on composition, mixing, and export, Sovereign DAW integrates cryptographic authorship proof directly into the music creation workflow. Song projects serve as protected creative containers, with audio, stems, lyrics, cover art, prompts, generated assets, revisions, and release artifacts each eligible for fingerprinting and tamper-evident provenance logging. Ordinary DAW actions — import, revision, export, mastering — may automatically generate timestamped provenance events, making the creative process itself a cryptographic authorship record. A release proof bundle packages the finished work alongside its full provenance chain, SHA3-256 fingerprints, AI-source documentation, and a self-contained verification script. This document is an addendum to Sovereign Defensive Publication v4.2 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19056811) and extends the Sovereign local-first creator IP protection architecture into music production and AI-assisted creative workflows. Published for the purpose of establishing prior art.